Surely they presumed that co-owning a majority share of an allegedly prestigious NHL franchise would get them a thing or two. Certainly in most years, by this time in October, it would get them the capitalistic blood-rush of watching the local, loyal fans fork over full-rate cash for a pre-season game or two. And maybe they would have also hoped, given their level of investment, to occasionally command the ear of the NHL commissioner.

After all, it was less than 20 years ago, when Gary Bettman took over as the league’s No. 1 suit, that total league revenues amounted to all of $400 million. The folks at Rogers and Bell, lest we forget, just forked over about $1.1 billion in the course of securing their membership into the 30-team club.

Alas, in Bettman’s NHL, not all billion-dollar owners are treated as equals. While Toronto counts itself among a handful of NHL franchisees who would like nothing more than the NHL season to commence on the double, you certainly won’t find anyone at 40 Bay St. professing such a sentiment publicly. Exercising the right to free speech, after all, can be awfully expensive in Bettman’s NHL. In his nearly 20 years on the job, the commissioner has carved out the right to arbitrarily fine any of the owners he works for as much as $1 million for comments deemed detrimental to the league’s forward progress.

As much as the league’s ownership suites are populated by the ranks of billionaires and billion-dollar corporations, there are actually only a select few power brokers who enjoy a say in the matters that matter. Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs, Detroit’s Mike Ilitch, Chicago’s Rocky Wirtz, Philadelphia’s Ed Snider — they’re pre-Bettman lifers who’ve carved out influence and power in hockey’s cigar-chomping old-boys’ club. As for the men who run MLSE — they’re most certainly not among the core group.

It comes down to simple math. In most scenarios Bettman only needs the consent of eight owners to veto any agreement. It’s no wonder, then, that Bettman’s hawkish anti-union base often gets its way while the let’s-just-play moderates in Toronto and New York and Montreal get ignored.

You can make a decent argument that Bettman has seen his annual salary balloon to $7.8 million simply because he has figured out how to rule unchallenged at the head of a mutual admiration society.

“The guys who matter, like Jacobs and Wirtz and Snider, they think (Bettman) is a genius,” says Jonathon Gatehouse, the author of a just-released book about the commissioner titled The Instigator. “And that’s a word they will use repeatedly to describe him — genius.”

Certainly Bettman has been accused of a lesser existence. Back in 1994-95, when Bettman was new in the gig and his ill-fated attempts to institute a salary cap saw the season truncated to 48 games, his arrival on the scene was met with a vitriol that occasionally bordered on violence.

“If I was Gary Bettman . . . I’d be worried about my well-being,” Chris Chelios, then of the Chicago Blackhawks, said at the time. “Some crazed fan, or even a player — who knows? — they might take it into their own hands and get him out of the way, and things might get settled. You’d hate to see something like that happen, but he took the job.”

When Bettman first arrived in the hockey world, even Wayne Gretzky, one of the game’s great diplomats, stood in front of a camera and questioned the commissioner’s very right to cancel games.

“I’ve played this game for 30 years,” Gretzky said, “and for someone to come along who’s only been in our sport for one year and tell us we’re not going to play is very frustrating and extremely disappointing.”

Nearly 20 years later, there aren’t many venues where fans greet him warmly. Still, Gatehouse, in authoring his book, has found a place in his heart for a commissioner who has long been accused of soullessness.

“Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but in writing the book I actually developed a certain amount of sympathy for (Bettman),” Gatehouse says. “(The NHL) has got all these basket-case franchises, and some of them are perennial ones — and it’s not just the Phoenixes. The Islanders or New Jersey, these are good markets, and still guys can’t figure out how to keep themselves out of trouble. . . . As the commissioner, you spend 75 per cent of your time putting out fires in this job. And everybody’s got an opinion on why your approach is completely wrong.”

The dynamics haven’t changed during this lockout. It was less than a month ago that James Dolan, the billionaire head of the company that owns the New York Rangers, expressed his anti-stoppage sentiments.

“The only thing I can say is that I want us to play hockey,” he said.

If Bettman didn’t fine Dolan for expressing that opinion, perhaps it’s because the commissioner had already neutered Dolan in a one-sided battle of legal wits a few years back. Those who remember Dolan’s attempt to stage an anti-Bettman coup over the issue of Internet rights remember the sad truth of a crap-kicking. As Gatehouse’s book points out, not only did Bettman begin legal proceedings to strip Dolan of control of the Rangers, Dolan was also forced to write a grovelling apology for his actions that acknowledged he could have been kicked out of the league.

That, folks, is power. On this Thanksgiving, as another of Bettman’s lockouts drags on, let’s assume the owners of the Maple Leafs aren’t the only ones saying thanks for nothing.

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